Editor's note: MLive readers and hubs chose 13 Michiganders to Watch in 2013. You'll see mini-profiles of the choices all this week. For the entire list, which we'll update every day with profile links, click here.

Dan Gilbert, 50, Detroit
Chairman, Quicken Loans Inc.

Dan Gilbert, a civic-minded billionaire, has already changed the face of downtown by buying up skyscrapers and turning them into homes for high-tech businesses.

At the same time, his umbrella company, Rock Ventures, is attracting hundreds of skilled positions to a city that Gilbert loves - but that many outsiders view as a lost cause.

“It’s different now, you can feel it, you can see it,” Gilbert said of the energy in his hometown. ”And what combats (negative perception) the best is getting people down here.”

In November he completed purchase on another Detroit skyscraper – the One Woodward building – and saw two more companies relocate downtown from the suburbs.

Moving employees downtown is easy, he said, because that’s where young talent wants to be anyway.

“They don’t move from to the suburbs of Detroit to go to the suburbs of Chicago or the suburbs of New York,” Gilbert said. “If you just take a step back and look at this logically - your entrepreneurs are moving to these urban cores.”

In December, he bought five more buildings in Downtown Detroit, giving him and his business partners a total of 15 structures totaling 2.6 million square feet of commercial real estate in the Central Business District.

What more does he planned for 2013?

Gilbert is openly talking about his push to bring retail shopping to downtown Detroit, including an Apple Store, and, if successful, he could continue to build momentum for a revived city center.

“There’s a lot of interest from national and local players," he said. "We’re very optimistic.”

Five things to know about Dan Gilbert

• He owns the Cleveland Cavaliers NBA team

• Gilbert is a Michigan State University graduate and earned a law degree from Wayne State University.

• He began building his fortune in the 1980s when he created Rock Financial, a mortgage lending company. In the 1990s Rock Financial opened its Internet operation and was bought out by Intuit. Gilbert led the new company and eventually bought Quicken Loans back from Intuit.

• He gained national notoriety in 2010 when he wrote an open letter to Cavaliers’ fans blasting NBA star LeBron James for leaving Cleveland to join the Miami Heat. He vowed Cleveland would win an NBA title before James, but James proved him wrong last season when he won a title with the Heat.

MLive Detroit business reporter David Muller contributed to this story.